Dear American Citizen: Most would agree the reach of the Federal Government is simply too big, and has lacked true accountability by the press - Yet now the mainstream media (seemingly) is beginning to show signs of investigative journalism. And they should! Admittedly, the IRS has been targeting "Pro-America, Patriot, less Government, more God" non-profit groups. Using Paul Harvey's words and images from our current culture, this video has a message that clearly speaks into the souls of American citizens.

America is not lazy. America is not apathetic. America is not complacent. Yes, some American's are lazy, complacent and apathetic. Some choose laziness and complacency over hard work and creativity. Some stumble through this life completely dependent upon the government, faith based organizations, and the kindness of neighbors...and as American's we support them, not because we have to - but because we want to. We want to help our fellow countryman. But their comes a point where a line must be drawn. There comes a time when we say, "We will go this far, but no further." We cannot carry you forever. You must "want it" yourself. You must begin to walk...and run - on your own. And in time, you will see, that you must begin to help others as well.

And the hard workers? Yes, we dream. We work. We keep the country rolling. We give financially to our churches. We help our neighbors. We pay our taxes. Not out of any sense of shame or compulsion but because we WANT to...

Between the two Paul Harvey Videos I have made they have been viewed over 2,000,000 times. Not bad for a video I put together for our student ministry...but future America needs your help today in spreading the message of this video.

Please share, post, embed, re-post, email and get this message into the hands of Americans. This is not about an election. This is about fighting for the Heart of America...Freedom. You would be surprised who may watch this video and begin to reject complacency and dependency upon the government...together we can slowly rise to rebuild America.

Paul Harvey lived from September 4, 1918-February 28, 2009. He received the Medal of Freedom in 2005.

Survivors of Texas migrant truck have told of how they came to be locked inside

One said smugglers connected to Zetas cartel charged $700 to take them across the Rio Grande, before they were locked inside the tractor-trailer

Group of up to 200 people sat in there from Saturday morning until 9pm when they set out for San Antonio where they were later discovered, source said

Driver James Bradley Jr has been charged with transporting migrants illegally

About Los Zetas:

The Zetas gang, also known as Los Zetas, was originally part of the Gulf cartel, one of Mexico's largest and deadliest criminal organizations which was established in the mid 1980s.

Zetas was formed in 1997 by a group of Special Forces defectors which served the larger cartel and acted as enforcers for them. They were hired, predominantly, as bodyguards and assassins and there were 31 of them in total to begin with.

Their name translates to 'The Zs' and is derived from the code names given to their leaders - all of which start with the letter Z.

Because of its members advanced military training, they brought a new level of sophistication to the underworld and created fresh challenges for US law enforcement agencies trying to crack down on the Mexico's drug gangs.

In 2002, they struck out on their own.

Unlike other gangs which navigated large parts of the underworld through making deals with violence a collateral side effect, the Zetas MO is torture and terror.

They are responsible for the 2010 massacre of 72 illegal migrants whose bodies were found dumped in a mass grave in San Fernando.

Images of the victims, who were from other Central and South American countries, shocked the world and illustrated the brutality of the Mexican cartel world.

They were savagely killed after refusing to work for Los Zetas or give them money to be released.

Note that this young man had both a criminal record and a deportation record — never mind that he was a fine-looking young man and educated in the United States, at the expense of the Fairfax County taxpayers.

Certainly some illegal immigrants are good people. But the fact remains that some are not, and this ugly reality applies to some protected by DACA, established by the Obama administration in 2012.

Close our porous southern border!Find and vet the illegal aliens in our midst!

Sunday, July 23, 2017

So, what's been happening while I was on blog break during Warren's visit to the AOW household and the D.C. area? All of us were having too much fun to be much concerned about politics!

Please bring me up to date about what happened from July 14 through July 22.

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Thursday, July 13, 2017

I'm referring to my disgust with the GOP's failure to keep their long-standing promise to repeal (and replace?) ObamaCare — not to Donald J. Trump, Jr.'s emails and his meeting with the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

...One [teacher] said he did everything he could this year to help a senior headed toward failure — contacting parents, alerting a counselor and an administrator and referring him to a school intervention team. But little changed, so the teenager got an E — a failing grade — in an English course required for graduation.

A couple weeks later, he said, he spotted the student in a cap and gown, collecting a diploma. How that happened remains a mystery, he said. “It solidified what I’d heard about grades being changed and that administrators will do whatever it takes to make sure they meet their graduation rates,” he said.

At another school, a teacher said two of her seniors this year missed weeks of school, did not do assignments or make up work, and failed her course. But the principal encouraged students and their families to appeal, she said, and their course grades were revised to a C and a D. She was told both graduated.

[...]

At a third high school, an employee with firsthand knowledge said grade-change forms are often signed by the principal but not by teachers. The employee said the forms are often attached to academic “packets” designed to compensate for missed or failed work, but many of the packets are only partly complete.

“I think it’s all a numbers game,” the employee said, alleging that more than 100 students at the school graduated with the help of such changes during the past four years.

Four-year graduation rates in Prince George’s have jumped from 74.1 percent in 2013 to 81.4 percent in 2016...the largest gain for that period of any school system in Maryland....

Read the rest of Some employees in a large Maryland school system see signs of grade tampering, if the Washington Post's subscriber wall will allow you to do so.By tampering with grades which are supposed to reflect students' achievement, the Prince George's County Public Schools System has denigrated and devalued the high school diplomas for all the students enrolled in the school system!

Lest we think that only public schools engage in such unethical behaviors, I am here to tell you that private schools sometimes cheat.

In fact, at the last private school in which I taught, administrators often overrode teachers' submitted grades so as to put higher grades on the report cards. The administration's philosophy at the time was that parents shouldn't see C's on their children's report cards because, after all, the parents were paying hefty tuition rates. As a result of this grade cheating on the part of the administration, several other teachers and I resigned at the end of the school term.

There were plenty of applicants to fill the vacancies we created. Mammon triumphs, after all.

Sadly, for especially the last five years, I've been something similar occurring in the homeschooling movement. Most parents now are looking for good grades for their children so that their children look good on paper – never mind the erosion of learning itself.

Is it any wonder that we are seeing a decline in actual education (student learning), particularly in high school and beyond? Even worse, is it any wonder that we are seeing an overall decline in student interest in acquiring knowledge?

The state of education in a nutshell (click directly on the graphic to enlarge it):

Sunday, July 2, 2017

I am posting a few days early for Independence Day 2017 so that readers of this blog will have enough time to enjoy the soaring music of Symphony No. 9 In E Minor (aka "From The New World") by Antonín Dvořák (1841 –1904) and the accompanying images:

For detailed information about the composer and the above piece, please see THIS POSTING at Musical Musings. Those of you familiar with the song "Goin' Home" you may be surprised to learn the following:

[Dvořák] composed the Symphony No. 9 in 1893, and while American music inspired him, he did not use any American melodies in the work. He wrote in the American style of pentatonic scale use and did it so well that for a long time many put the cart before the horse, especially in regards to the melody from the 2nd movement. A song named "Goin' Home" takes its melody from the symphony, not the other way around. The words were not set to the melody until many years after the symphony had been written.

The Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. John Adams put forth a resolution earlier in the year which made a formal declaration inevitable. A committee was assembled to draft the formal declaration, to be ready when congress voted on independence. Adams persuaded the committee to select Thomas Jefferson to compose the original draft of the document, which congress would edit to produce the final version. The Declaration was ultimately a formal explanation of why Congress had voted on July 2 to declare independence from Great Britain, more than a year after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. The Independence Day of the United States of America is celebrated on July 4, the day Congress approved the wording of the Declaration.

Quotes from signers:

"Believe me, dear Sir: there is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But, by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose; and in this, I think I speak the sentiments of America."
Thomas Jefferson

"I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth."
John Adams

"There, I guess King George will be able to read that."
John Hancock

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right...and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers."
John Adam

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
Thomas Jefferson

"I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet through all the gloom I see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is worth all the means. This is our day of deliverance."
John Adams

"Equal and exact justice to all men...freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected,these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us."
Thomas Jefferson

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
Benjamin Franklin

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